Embodiments of the present invention relate in general to load balancing systems and, more specifically, to systems and methods for server farm resource allocation and load balancing.
In many modern server farm applications, load balancing is done strictly on a hardware utilization basis. For example, the servers in a particular server farm can be compared based on processor and/or memory utilization and incoming traffic can be routed accordingly to a least utilized server in that server farm. One drawback of this approach for GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) Gateway Support Node (GGSN) servers is that many may be limited in terms of support capability (e.g., may support IPv4, but not IPv6 Packet Data Protocol (PDP) types). External (e.g., Domain Name Service (DNS)) provisioning approaches have been used, but these may not provide an efficient use of public Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
In addition, for Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) systems utilized in AAA (authentication, authorization, and accounting) protocols, specific information communicated by an AAA server may not be used by a Server Load Balancer (SLB) to make intelligent decisions for traffic direction. What is needed is a system and method of server load balancing and resource allocation that can utilize information in an access request to better direct traffic based on server capability.